Should you wish to reduce the Daily Telegraph's opera critic to apoplectic rage, just casually mention your enjoyment of the "opera singing" of Katherine Jenkins, Russell Watson or Paul Potts. Such people, I will inform you as acrid smoke gushes from my ears, have never performed in an opera professionally, and their reliance on amplifying microphones is the equivalent of Joe Bloggs outshooting Wayne Rooney by using a bionic boot. Accomplished musical entertainers they may be; opera singers they are not.

Leaving aside the "crossover" activities of operatic superstars such as Bryn Terfel or Renée Fleming, only one of the Classic FM brigade can honestly claim to be successfully straddling opera and the world of light music ­ romantic ballads, show tunes and pop songs. He is the handsome cheeky chappie Alfie Boe from Blackpool, and he has a real story to tell.

Currently, he's taking a break from his money-spinning miked concerts to sing au naturel the tiny role of the Young Servant in Richard Strauss's Elektra at the Royal Opera House. Although the engagement will probably net him a tenth of what he could earn crooning O sole mio and he will be on stage for less than a minute, he is "thrilled and honoured" to be singing at Covent Garden and takes the music's technical challenges - "several big high notes, tricky German text and a lot of information to communicate" - extremely seriously.

One of nine children of an Irish Catholic family, Alfie's father was an aficionado of tenors such as Jussi Bjorling and Richard Tauber. Young Alfie preferred Status Quo, but in pursuit of love he joined an am dram society and emulated the sound he'd heard on his dad's records for a part in West Side Story.

After school, he became a paint-sprayer, driving his workmates mad with further Tauber imitations. One day, he was overheard by a customer who worked in the music business. Boe is frustrated that he doesn't know the name of the man who changed his life by persuading him that he had real talent and urging him to try for a place with the D'Oyly Carte.

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In a nothing-to-lose spirit, Boe decided to give it a whirl, singing Tauber's Dein ist mein ganzes Herz at his audition. To his amazement, he got a job in the chorus and learnt the basics of his craft on the road performing Gilbert & Sullivan - a repertory for which he still has great fondness.

He then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and, after further studies at the elite finishing school of the National Opera Studio, launched himself as an opera singer. He did quite well for a few years, but took a step back by joining the Royal Opera's apprentice programme.

In retrospect, he feels this was a mistake - "It was the wrong point in my career, I needed to be performing more" - so he took an "agonising" decision to leave the programme early. The gamble paid off when he landed himself the plum job of singing Rodolfo in Baz Luhrmann's wonderful Broadway production of La Bohème. During his year in America, Boe found not only a new teacher, Bill Schumann, who transformed his technique, but also his wife Sarah - the couple now live near Oxford and had their first baby this summer.

Back in England, Boe signed up with a new manager, Neil Ferris, and contacted an old RCM friend, Darren Henley, managing director of Classic FM.

They repackaged Boe as someone who could combine mass appeal with respectable singing of the mainstream operatic repertory. Their strategy has worked: Boe now records for EMI, and his albums of popular arias, Neapolitan songs and traditional anthems have sold in their hundreds of thousands.

But alongside the glamour photo-shoots and the adoration of his knicker-throwing lady fans, Boe, 35, has doggedly continued to sing opera. He'd rather not talk about the "nightmare" of participating in ENO's catastrophic Kismet with a director who had "lost the plot", but he'll be back at the Coliseum in January to sing Rodolfo in Jonathan Miller's new production of La Bohème and is greatly looking forward to his debut as Alfredo in WNO's La traviata. Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore and Lensky in Eugene Onegin are also on his wish list, and he wants to explore the romantic heroes of Gounod and Massenet. "I couldn't call myself an opera singer if I didn't sing opera," he says, thereby winning my gold medal. He's not as good as, say, José Carreras was at his age, and I don't think he ultimately has the power or beauty of voice to make the top international grade, but his performances have charm and grace, his singing is secure and polished, and his engaging personality make him as popular in the business as he is with the public. Alfie Boe, in sum, makes the word "crossover" respectable.